Human-centric Digital Innovation
The current digital transformation pace requires all organizations to rethink their processes, strategies, and activities and human resources management. On October 28th, we had the opportunity to discuss on these topics and to show the potential of Augmented Reality to high-level professionals at the ‘2019 General Partners’ Meeting Italia’, an in-house event organized by the Italian branch of Ernst & Young, one of the most important global consulting firms, held at the Hilton Metropole in Florence.
The aim of the conference was to align the EY partners on the shared approach towards technological innovation, by defining the management and evaluation criteria used to guide the selection of digital products and services that generate a real competitive advantage At the center of any decision, however, there are always the human beings, the benefits and the level of well-being they derive from new tools, as underlined by Prof. Fabio Babiloni, neuroscientist and Chief Scientific Officer at BrainSigns, on stage together with Donato Iacovone, EY managing partner:
In a context of accelerated digital transformation, the measure of man in terms of capacity, well-being, openness, satisfaction, and advantage over the use of new technologies becomes a fundamental challenge.
We need a technological Renaissance which, as Artificial Intelligences advance, can maintain the centrality of the human being, strengthened but not replaced, made “useless and irrelevant” by machines, a danger from which the historian Yuval Harari also warns us about in his last book ‘21 lessons for the 21st century‘; technological innovations should instead support the person in realizing their creative potential and in the pursuit of transversal competences. In this view, it was chosen the figure of Leonardo da Vinci as an emblem of the EY event.
Human-centric Digital Innovation
The current digital transformation pace requires all organizations to rethink their processes, strategies, and activities and human resources management. On October 28th, we had the opportunity to discuss on these topics and to show the potential of Augmented Reality to high-level professionals at the ‘2019 General Partners’ Meeting Italia’, an in-house event organized by the Italian branch of Ernst & Young, one of the most important global consulting firms, held at the Hilton Metropole in Florence.
The aim of the conference was to align the EY partners on the shared approach towards technological innovation, by defining the management and evaluation criteria used to guide the selection of digital products and services that generate a real competitive advantage At the center of any decision, however, there are always the human beings, the benefits and the level of well-being they derive from new tools, as underlined by Prof. Fabio Babiloni, neuroscientist and Chief Scientific Officer at BrainSigns, on stage together with Donato Iacovone, EY managing partner:
In a context of accelerated digital transformation, the measure of man in terms of capacity, well-being, openness, satisfaction, and advantage over the use of new technologies becomes a fundamental challenge.
We need a technological Renaissance which, as Artificial Intelligences advance, can maintain the centrality of the human being, strengthened but not replaced, made “useless and irrelevant” by machines, a danger from which the historian Yuval Harari also warns us about in his last book ‘21 lessons for the 21st century‘; technological innovations should instead support the person in realizing their creative potential and in the pursuit of transversal competences. In this view, it was chosen the figure of Leonardo da Vinci as an emblem of the EY event.
To explore the relationship between people and new technologies, EY set up five experiential corners in the meeting room, coordinated by Prof. Babiloni and his team at BrainSigns, a neuroscience laboratory born as a spin-off of the Università di Roma La Sapienza, which deals with recording and analyzing the signals produced by the brain and which has conducted actual research sessions during the event.
Each corner was equipped not only with a different technology but the experiments intended to give answers to specific questions such as Are we ready to lead the digital transformation ?, What information attracts our attention the most ?, What are the ways for ‘continuous improvement’?, How to guide financial choices using emotions?. The data was collected, for example, through individual tests based on videos measuring the degree of openness of people towards technology; or, by recording through eye tracking tools the retained information after displaying a series of documents; another activity involved the participants in a Virtual Reality (VR) simulation of challenges related to the Industry 4.0; while NVISO used sentiment analysis’ techniques to predict financial choices based on face reading.
To explore the relationship between people and new technologies, EY set up five experiential corners in the meeting room, coordinated by Prof. Babiloni and his team at BrainSigns, a neuroscience laboratory born as a spin-off of the Università di Roma La Sapienza, which deals with recording and analyzing the signals produced by the brain and which has conducted actual research sessions during the event.
Each corner was equipped not only with a different technology but the experiments intended to give answers to specific questions such as Are we ready to lead the digital transformation ?, What information attracts our attention the most ?, What are the ways for ‘continuous improvement’?, How to guide financial choices using emotions?. The data was collected, for example, through individual tests based on videos measuring the degree of openness of people towards technology; or, by recording through eye tracking tools the retained information after displaying a series of documents; another activity involved the participants in a Virtual Reality (VR) simulation of challenges related to the Industry 4.0; while NVISO used sentiment analysis’ techniques to predict financial choices based on face reading.
Finally, the question Can digital support tools reduce mental fatigue?, was paired with JoinPad’s AR technology, which involved two participants in the construction of the model of Leonardo da Vinci’s self-supporting bridge: one participant had to follow the paper instructions and the other one Augmented Reality instructions provided through our app specially created for the event.
In our case, the BrainSigns team monitored the physiological parameters of people using an EEG headset, construction time, and Mental fatigue on an unconscious level. The results of the experiment lasting a total of one hour can be summarized as follows: those who followed the paper instructions felt a low level of initial stress as a result of greater familiarity with the medium but saw an increase in stress during the process of construction because they had to interpret the steps as they went on. Attendees who used the AR application, on the other hand, underwent a high initial stress peak due to the poor if not non-existent familiarity with the technology; they then spent more time building the model using more cognitive resources, but after the initial moment, they completed the activity feeling less strained.
Finally, the question Can digital support tools reduce mental fatigue?, was paired with JoinPad’s AR technology, which involved two participants in the construction of the model of Leonardo da Vinci’s self-supporting bridge: one participant had to follow the paper instructions and the other one Augmented Reality instructions provided through our app specially created for the event.
In our case, the BrainSigns team monitored the physiological parameters of people using an EEG headset, construction time, and Mental fatigue on an unconscious level. The results of the experiment lasting a total of one hour can be summarized as follows: those who followed the paper instructions felt a low level of initial stress as a result of greater familiarity with the medium but saw an increase in stress during the process of construction because they had to interpret the steps as they went on. Attendees who used the AR application, on the other hand, underwent a high initial stress peak due to the poor if not non-existent familiarity with the technology; they then spent more time building the model using more cognitive resources, but after the initial moment, they completed the activity feeling less strained.
Experiments have shown that new technologies certainly require a minimum of training activities in the beginning, even for just a few hours, but later, they reduce time, fatigue and increase personal productivity during a given task. Also, in the words of Donato Iacovone:
The data shows that it is not the market or technology that makes the difference or leads the choice of a technology rather than the other but the human factor: the needs of people, the impacts on people are those that will guide us and that will allow us to make competitive choices in the long run.
The experiential area created for the event represented on a small scale what will become the “Wavespace” by Ernst & Young in Rome, a collaborative and showroom space that will serve as a meeting point for digital communities and companies looking for innovative solutions such as Augmented Reality. In this regard, JoinPad is already working with EY on some AR solutions to showcase inside the Wavespace.
Experiments have shown that new technologies certainly require a minimum of training activities in the beginning, even for just a few hours, but later, they reduce time, fatigue and increase personal productivity during a given task. Also, in the words of Donato Iacovone:
The data shows that it is not the market or technology that makes the difference or leads the choice of a technology rather than the other but the human factor: the needs of people, the impacts on people are those that will guide us and that will allow us to make competitive choices in the long run.
The experiential area created for the event represented on a small scale what will become the “Wavespace” by Ernst & Young in Rome, a collaborative and showroom space that will serve as a meeting point for digital communities and companies looking for innovative solutions such as Augmented Reality. In this regard, JoinPad is already working with EY on some AR solutions to showcase inside the Wavespace.
Leave a Comment